The Philippines, whose economy was once primarily agricultural, has recently
experienced a significant industrialization. In 1980, over 37% of exports
were agricultural products; in 2015 they accounted for no more than 7%,
while industrial products accounted for over 70% of exports (electronic
products alone represented 44% of exports).

Classified in the category of “newly industrialized countries”, the
Philippines ranks among what bourgeois economists call the “Tigers” who, in
the wake of the “Dragons” (South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) are
integrated into the capitalist world market thanks to offshore relocations
attracted by a cheap labor-force. In 2015, the country experienced the
highest growth rate after China.

The Philippines specializes in shipbuilding, automotive equipment,
electronics, computers, chemistry and call centers. Mining with copper,
gold, silver and nickel is also booming. The country also benefits largely
from remittances from the very numerous Filipino emigration.

Over the last thirty years, the working class has largely developed; the
number active in the “manufacturing” industry has more than doubled to 15%.

CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT AND PROLETARIAN MISERY

This development, touted by international institutions conceals severe
economic backwardness and poverty. About 30% of the workforce is still
employed in agriculture but, despite this, the country is not
self-sufficient; it must import rice (it is one of the world's biggest
importers) to feed its rapidly growing population (75 million Filipinos in
2000, 100 million today). The country is heavily in debt and corruption is
endemic.

The majority of the population still lives in miserable conditions.
According to official statistics, a quarter of the population lives on less
than a dollar a day and according to the IBON Foundation, almost
three-quarters live on less than two dollars. While according to the
government, unemployment is around 7%, it is actually more than 25% if we
take into account imposed part-time work below the living wage. Finally, a
large part of the urban population lives in slums. Some estimate that six of
the twelve million inhabitants of the capital Manila live in these
shantytowns. They live amidst mountains of garbage that pollute the air,
water and soil, and face expulsion policies pursued by the public
authorities (as in Quezon City in 2014).

Like many capitalist countries, the Philippines has been implementing
“neoliberal” measures of privatization and deregulation. Among measures
implemented within this framework, there is the “contractualization” system,
nicknamed “Endo” (end of contract), which prevents workers from obtaining
guaranteed employee status by recruiting them to contracts (often
successive) of less than five months. In the special economic zones (SEZ’s)
that have multiplied, workers are deprived of almost every right and are
subject to severe corporate despotism; in addition, international
organizations have regularly denounced the use of forced labor in small
enterprises and in agriculture (especially in sugar cane plantations)

The Philippines is also one of the main sources of emigration in the world:
there are on average 6000 departures per day. Eleven million Filipinos live
abroad, including three million in the United States, two million in Saudi
Arabia, and some 700,000 in Canada. Moreover 300,000 Filipino seafarers are
plying the oceans on merchant ships.

The integration of the Philippines in the capitalist world economy was
facilitated by the close links of the country with its former colonial
power, the United States.

The Philippines, formerly a Spanish colony, was conquered by US imperialism
in a bloody war between 1899 and 1902. The US military devastated the
country, leading real “extermination campaigns” and the internment of
civilians in concentration camps, all accompanied by a racist discourse to
celebrate the superiority of the Americans, descendants of “Aryan
ancestors”. This colonial genocide was responsible for the murder of
250-750,000 civilians (Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski “The anteroom
of the Holocaust”, Twentieth Century. History Review, No. 99, 2008).

The country was a US colony until the end of World War II before becoming
formally independent only to be run by a succession of pro-American leaders
-- the most famous and the most ferocious being the dictator Ferdinand
Marcos who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1965 to 1986.

PRESIDENT DUTERTE: VICTORY OF “LAW AND ORDER”

In early May, Rodrigo Duterte was elected president with nearly 40% of the
votes in the second round. He won a clear victory by six million votes in a
poll with a high degree of participation.

Duterte conducted a demagogic campaign centered around issues of security,
based on his record as mayor of Davao. In this city, he brought “order” by
setting up death squads, the Alsa Masa militia composed of former soldiers
and thugs, and the Davao Death Squad. These groups are accused of murderingover a
thousand people,
including street children, in the 1990s, in the name of the war against
drugs.

By early September, this terror policy had been widely implemented on a
national level and nearly 2,500 people had been executed by the joint
attacks of the murderers from the police and those of the death squads.

Although sometimes claiming to be left-wing, Duterte said during his
campaign that his political model was the dictator Marcos who was overthrown
in the so-called “popular revolution” of 1986 resulting in a
“democratization” that broke the hegemony of his clan on power, but in favor
of other bourgeois forces. Misogynist through and through, he glorifies
rape, declaring “jokingly” that he would participate in the gang rape of an
Australian nun, or in saying that he had 2 wives and 2 mistresses...

It is not by chance that this reactionary demagogue has been dubbed “Dirty
Duterte” by the media in reference to Dirty Harry, the cop using expeditious
methods, played by Clint Eastwood, and “The Punisher” in reference to a
Marvel super-hero using ultra-violence against criminals.

Economically and socially, he made promises to the poor and the workers,
denouncing in particular the system of “contracts” as “anti-popular” (while
refusing to make a written commitment). During his election campaign he
received the support of the trade union confederations TUCP (Trade Union
Congress of the Philippines, the largest confederation) KMU (Kilusang Mayo
Uno, Union of May, supposedly more combative, linked to the Maoist PCP) etc,
while others were taking no position. In his government he appointed Joel
Maglunsod Mindanao, the vice president of the KMU, as Undersecretary of
State for Labor and Employment.

But this “social” image of defender of the poor and the support given him by
the union bureaucrats, cannot hide his decades-long support for neoliberal
policies. He proposed to develop “public-private partnerships” to fund
infrastructure spending, to increase the “competitiveness” of the economy to
attract foreign investment, to remove protectionist measures...

His real feeling about the proletariat was proven when, at a meeting in
February, he warned the KMU not try to organize to organize EPZ workers:
“We are one in ideology. [But] do not do that [organize the workers] because
you will destroy my administration. If you do that, I will kill you all”.
(Http://www.equaltimes.org/what-can-workers-in-the?lang=en#.V-L0MBJUXs1).

KMU bureaucrats have complied, but the threat has already been realized
elsewhere. On September 17, Orlando Abangan, a trade union activist of the
Partido Manggagawa (PM), was murdered (“PM Condemns vigilante-style killing
of a leader”, partidongmanggagawa2001.blogspot.fr) keeping with the
entrenched tradition of the Phillipines ruling class of repression of the
proletariat. The most brutal anti-union practices remain common; as of today
the promises made by Duarte to the workers have not been adhered to, and
when a trade union delegation went to remind Maglunsod of the promise to end
the Endo system, the under-secretary was only able to answer that he would
forward the demand to the Minister...

Duterte is therefore a totally bourgeois politician even if he occasionally
presents himself as a “socialist”. This does not prevent him from receiving
more or less open support from multiple parties claiming to be communist.

THE MAOIST PC OFFERS ITS SERVICES TO DUARTE – WHO ACCEPTS THEM...

The pseudo-radical face of Duterte gave a pretext to the Maoist Communist
Party of the Philippines (CPP) to prostrate themselves before him in the
name of the “democratic revolution”. The CPP has championed an “alliance"
with Duterte because his election “opens up prospects for meaningful
change” (“Struggle and alliance under the Duterte regime”, Bayan,
English edition, June 7, 2016). This alliance is justified in the name of
nationalism: Duterte, “not fully subject to US imperialism” would be
“the only opportunity of ending 70 years of government under the United
States”. The Maoists have a totally bourgeois and reactionary program of
“national unity, peace and development” that is to say unity behind
the bourgeoisie, social peace and development of the national capitalist
economy (“Prospects under Duterte’s presidency”, Bayan, English
edition, 15 May 2016). The exiled leader of the party said during the
campaign, that he hopes Duterte “will
actually serve the Filipino people in their fight for national liberation,
democracy, social justice, development”;
he is willing to support “all
the patriotic and progressive policies and acts of the Duterte presidency.
(http://josemariasison.org/interview-with-prof-jose-maria-sison-on-the-election-of-duterte-as-president/
May 11, 2016).

The CPP will quickly be rewarded for its support. Duterte offers a
cease-fire to the New People's Army (NPA), a guerilla organization which has
several thousand fighters and which had been carrying out a “people’s war”
since 1969. The new president also appoints three representatives of the
“National Democratic Front”, i.e. the union of the “mass” organizations of
the CPP (“3 NDFP nominees to sit in new cabinet”, Bayan, English
edition, June 7, 2016). The Maoists get the ministries of Agrarian Reform
and Labour and Employment, for the leaders of their peasant union the KMP
and of the KMU.

It is true that the CPP has distanced itself from the bloody police terror
initiated by the new president (“No
more cooperation with Duterte’s undemocratic and anti-people ‘drug war’”,
cpp.ph, communiqué of 12 August 2016). It also accuses his of being a
“reactionary regime” which betrays its promises, which capitulates to
“big business, the US, the military and capitalist bureaucrats” while
defending a “tactical alliance” with him (“Duterte is Undermining the
opportunity for change and peace”, cpp.ph, communiqué of August 7).

So it remains a partisan (barely critical) of this reactionary demagogue:
the CPP greeted his “peaceful and independent foreign policy” when
Duterte denounced the US military presence on Philippine soil (“Positive
significance of Duterte's avowal to uphold an independent foreign policy”
cpp.ph, communiqué of 11 September 2016). It calls on Duterte to make the
Philippines an “independent and non-aligned country” (“All US
military forces in entire country must go home”, cpp.ph, statement of 13
September 2016) which should conclude trade agreements with Venezuela, Iran,
Cuba, Russia, North Korea and China (“Positive significance of Duterte's
avowal ...”).

While it may seem radical by its use of violence and its pseudo-Marxist
references, the CPP is a bourgeois force that defends an independent
capitalist development as part of a union of “patriotic forces”, which is
precisely an inter-class alliance that chains the workers to the interests
of the bourgeoisie.

THE “FAR” LEFT OFFERS “CRITCAL” SUPPORT

Besides the CPP, there are many other pseudo-revolutionary parties.

On the one hand there is the former pro-Soviet
party – the PKP-1930 (Partido Komunista ng Pilipanas-1930, Communist Party
of the Philippines since 1930). The PKP sharply criticized the candidate
Duterte considered as reactionary a candidate as the others (“Prospects for
the Philippines in the wake of the May 9 general elections”, solidnet.org).
But less than a month later, the party congratulated President Duterte! The
PKP – like its enemy brothers of the CPP– offered its services: “we
support all efforts of your administration to fulfill your campaign promise”
to fight against crime. The bloodthirsty work of the death squads probably
satisfied these false communists. All this is, once again, justified by a
completely bourgeois program “to build a prosperous country in peace,
national sovereignty, democracy and social justice” (“Open letter to
President elect Rodrigo R. Duterte” pkp1930 .org). This turnaround was
justified by the fact that “his
electoral victory reflects the hope of many voters”....

There are also forces from splits from the PKP from the early ‘90’s. These
splits were made on the question of the nature of the revolution in the
Philippines. For the “rejectionists”, especially represented by Filemon
Lagman, the Philippines is not a “semi-colonial and semi-feudal” capitalist
country but a country in which a workers’ revolution must take power.

Despite this tactical change, these forces – the Partido Lakas ng Masas
(PLM Party of the Laboring Masses) and the Partido Manggagwa (PM,
Labor Party) – are equally as alien to classist proletarian positions as the
PKP.

The PLM estimates that the “political situation [is] extremely
interesting and challenging” and responds positively to the advances of
the Maoists for “a government of national unity, peace and development”
defending a “struggle for a national program against the dominance of the
neoliberal elite” (“Philippines left facing a Duterte-CPP coalition
government”, masa.ph, May 28, 2016).

PM does not provide open political support to the government or to the PCP
but asked Duterte to “wage war against contractualization as vigorous as
the war against drugs” (“Group Asks Duterte for big names of endo lords
in the country”, August 2, 2016, partidongmanggagawa2001.blogspot.fr). It
also demands that union activists be officially given the role of labor
inspectors (“PM wants union officers deputized as labor inspector for endo
campaign”, August 5, 2016). It would not be too difficult to find a stronger
critique of Duterte government!

For its part, the Trotskyist Fourth International (Usec) has managed to
build a section in the Philippines from a split in the CPP: the
Revolutionary Workers Party of Mindanao (RPM-M). This party has responded
favorably to the advances of the leaders of the CPP, which it called
“comrades in struggle for the liberation of the oppressed”. RPM believes
it has “a difference of method” with the Maoists but common –
bourgeois! – objectives: “democratic reforms put forward without losing
sight of the elimination of the oppression of the masses” (16 June 2016
rpm-m.org “Response to Jose Ma Sison's Call for Dialogue”). It's the old
program of social democracy: reforms today and socialism in an indeterminate
time!

All these pseudo-revolutionary currents, completely reformist in reality,
are only gadflies buzzing around the PCP itself prostrated before the
Philippine bourgeoisie and its current head Duterte; they are, like the PCP
obstacles to the proletarian struggle.

But there exists in the country a group that claims to represent the
Communist Left, “Internatyonalismo”. Is there a class alternative to this
pro-bourgeois “far left”?

INTERNATYONALISMO: ROAD TO NOWHERE

Since 2009, in fact, the International Communist Current (ICC) has had a
section in the Philippines. Under the title “The Duterte regime in the
Philippines, appeal to ‘the strong man’ and weakness of the working class”,
the ICC website published in June an article from its Philippine section on
the presidential election, also including positions taken earlier.

Far from putting forward a real classist
perspective, all Internatyonalismo has to offer its readers is whining about
“the impotence [the] despair, [the] lack of perspective
[and] loss of confidence in the
unity of the working class and the struggles of the laboring masses”.

“One
negative effect of decadent capitalism in its decomposing stage is the rise
of desperation and hopelessness among the poverty-stricken masses. One
indication is the lumpenisation of parts of the toiling masses, increasing
number of suicides, rotten culture among the young and gangsterism. All of
these are manifestations of the increasing discontentment of the masses in
the current system but they don’t know what to do and what to replace it
with. In other words, increasing discontent but no perspective for the
future. That’s why the mentality of ’everyone for himself’ and ’each against
all’ strongly influences a significant portion of the working class”.

Internatyonalismo condemns the Duterte regime as “a rabid defender of
national capitalism” and “a government of the capitalist class for
the capitalist class”; but faced with this bourgeois power, what is the
perspective? “For
us, what is important is to analyse and understand as communists why
significant numbers of the population are ready to accept Duterte as
dictator and ‘Godfather”
initially. And then, “persevere
with theoretical clarification, organisational strengthening and militant
interventions to prepare for the future struggles at the international
level”.
Wait and see...

Added to this there are the caricatures of
struggle which the ICC section provides as an example to the proletarians:
“solidarity movements (anti-CPE movement in France [student
struggle], the Indignados in Spain,
the class struggle in Greece, the Occupy movement in the United States)”.

The logic behind this is that the Philippines is not “ripe” for the
proletarian revolution. This is what was explained by the ICC in an article
hailing the creation of the section (“Salut to the new sections of the ICC
in the Philippines and Turkey”, 5 March 2009). In it the ICC reaffirmed its
position on the dominated countries enunciated in 1982 (“The proletariat of
Western Europe at the center
of the generalization of the class struggle”, International Review
31):

“Only
by attacking its heart and head will the proletariat be able to defeat the
capitalist beast. For centuries, history has placed the heart and head of
the capitalist world in Western Europe. The world revolution will take its
first steps where capitalism took its first steps. It's here that the
conditions for the revolut­ion, enumerated above, can be found in the most
developed form. (...)It is thus only in Western Europe, where the proletariat has the longest
experience of struggle, where it has already been confronted for decades
with all the ‘working class’ mystifications of the most elaborate kind, that
there can be a full development of the political consciousness which is
indispensable in its struggle for revolution”.

For the ICC, the revolution will be European or it will not be! The
proletarians of the young capitalist countries but also of the United States
or Japan, have to be patient and wait for the conscious European proletariat
to resume the fight. So the only prospect remaining in the Philippines is
the development of struggles on the bourgeois democratic terrain (such as
the Indignados, Occupy, or Podemos which is its legitimate offspring) or
reformist (such as the “class struggle” in Greece that was made – and was
defeated – under the leadership of Syriza and the KKE).

It is clear that ultimately Internatyonalismo is unable to offer a class
perspective to the Filipino proletariat, a truly communist perspective.

FOR A PROLETARIAN PERSPECTIVE

For communists, it is neither the horizon of bourgeois revolution (even
radical) nor the impotent waiting for the reawakening of the European
proletariat which are on the agenda. Today, all regions of the world have
been thrown into turmoil by the capitalist mode of production. Imperialism
has caused capitalism to penetrate into every pore of Philippine society.

The proletarian revolution has long been maturing in this eastern Asia
plowed in every direction by the irresistible movement of capitalist
expansion. It means, as elsewhere, the destruction of all mercantile and
wage relations, and all states erected to defend them.

Wherever it erupts and whatever the greater or lesser importance of the
residues left by the limits of the capitalist transformation of societies,
this revolution will find in the violent shock with the capillary network of
imperialism – as celebrated by bourgeois hacks under the name of
“globalization” – the material conditions of a rapid dissemination, which
will eventually have to lay siege to and destroy the strongholds of the
counter-revolution in North America and Europe.

This longer perspective that is ours, the one based on materialism, implies
the rebirth of the class party, faithful to authentic Marxism and enjoying a
strong influence among the ranks of the proletariat. This party will be able
to lead the working class in the Philippines as elsewhere toward the assault
against capitalism, only on the base of the exclusive defense of the
interests of the proletariat and the exploited masses, in opposition to all
democratic, reformist and interclassist illusions conveyed by the false
defenders of socialism.